The Sierra Nevada, John Muir's "Range of Light", is perhaps the most beautiful single range in the contiguous United States, as well as the highest and longest. The Rockies may be longer, but do not have the unified and contiuous mass the Sierra presents. On shaded relief maps, the huge elongate blob of the Sierra, rising from the flat Central Valley on the west and the deserts of the Great Basin on the east, stands out strikingly as a truly enormous and important mountain grouping.

Even though Colorado has 54 peaks over 14,000 feet to the 11 in the Sierra, and only Mount Whitney rises higher than the highest summits in the Rockies, it can still claim to be the highest range in the 48 states. It is also much more of a climber's range than most others in the American west, with a huge variety of technical rock routes and fair number of summits where ascents require serious mountaineering skill by the easiest route. The only serious mountain element lacking in the Sierra is real glaciation.

Since the Sierra is one long, uninterrupted crest utterly without major geographical or political boundaries crossing it, subdividing the range is bound to be an arbitrary exercise. The PEMRACS attempts to chop things up, but the sub-ranges presented here are nothing more than one person's vain attempt to impose an order that is not really there.

Map of Sierra NevadaClick on red triangle icons for links to other ranges.

Photos of Peaks in the Sierra Nevada

Mount WhitneyMount Whitney is the flat-topped feature to the left and behind the much more spectacular-looking Keeler Needle in this picture taken from the final section of the Mount Whitney trail (1989-06-13).